JOURNAL OF THE KANKAKEE AREA RADIO SOCIETY
Volume 87 Issue 3
Editors: K9NR, K9QT Photos: K9NR Contributors: N9IO W9KVR
March 2012
TUNE-UP NIGHT SCHEDULED FOR MARCH The March KARS meeting will be held at the downstairs meeting room at St. Mary’s Hospital at 7PM on Tuesday March 6th. Enter via the west entrance under the emergency room entrance. The program will be a “tune-up” night. An array of test equipment, including the club’s new service monitor will be on hand. We will be able to very accurately measure your radio’s power output, deviation, frequency, receiver sensitivity, etc. HT’s are easy to do as they have built-in power supplies. If your HT has an antenna connector other than a BNC or SMA, you will need to provide an adapter. Mobile units can also be checked if you have a power cord with pig tails.
DAYTON PLANS 2012
A view of the February KARS meeting at St. Mary’s Hospital
KARS KALENDAR
March 6…...……….KARS General Meeting March 3-4...………..ARRL DX SSB Contest March 20……………..KARS Board Meeting March 20…………………….Vernal Equinox March 21..………………...Weather Seminar March 17-19…...BARTG HF RTTY Contest March 24-25…..CQWW WPX SSB Contest April 3…...………….KARS General Meeting 440 MACHINE IS QRV! April 15……………..ARRL Rookie Roundup After being down for many months, April 17…………….....KARS Board Meeting
the 440 repeater was placed back on the air in the middle of February. The new machine is a Motorola MSR 2000 replacing the old ICOM. K9NR was able to finish to job when John N9LYE procured a new power amp for the transmitter. Just in time for the severe weather season!
The Kankakee Area Radio Society operates repeaters on: 146.34/.94 107.2 PL Access 449.8/444.8 114.8 PL Access Also, co-sponsors: 145.130 107.2 PL Access Additionally, KARS sponsors: 144.39 2 Wide Area APRS digi-peaters 145.53 KARS DX Cluster
Okay, so this year’s winter wasn’t exactly long and grueling (ya gotta love that “global warming).” Nonetheless, KARS members are counting the days till Hamvention. The email chain will be circulated soon. Assuming you bathe regularly and have no particularly annoying personal habits and you are planning on attending and would like to ride along or caravan with the KARS group, send an email to Don K9NR to be kept in the loop.
SEVERE WEATHER SEMINAR As was reported last month, The Kankakee County severe weather spotter program, presented by the National Weather Service, will be held on March 21st at 7:00PM in the Kankakee Community College auditorium. Be sure to attend if you haven’t been there in a couple of years to get your credentials as a weather spotter updated. It doesn’t hurt to attend every year, to become reacquainted with pertinent criteria which should be reported, as well as those things which do not need to be reported.
ATTEND!!! IT’S IMPORTANT!!!
NCS FOR MARCH HAPPY BIRTHDAY W9IEY March 2nd KC9VDI March 6th KC9OAK March 14th N9RJM March 20th N9HJR March 23rd K9BYT March 24th If we miss your birthday or get it wrong, please let us know!
The net meets every Monday at 2100 hours local time. All stations with or without traffic are invited to check in. March 5 N9LYE March 12 KC9UNQ March 19 N9OE March 26 N9FD Don’t forget the net!
DUES FOR 2012 ARE DUE NOW!
KARS KEY KLICKS
KARS HOMEPAGE—
Page 2
WWW.W9AZ.COM –KARS HOMEPAGE
KARS SUPPORTS HK0NA DX-PEDITION
W9GRS SCORES BIG...AGAIN!
BY CLAY N9IO
By Troy W9KVR
Continuing it’s tradition of supporting major DX-peditions (particularly when KARS member WB9Z is an operator), the club donated $100 toward the HK0NA operation on Malpelo Island. Be sure to check out the KARS logo on the expedition web page:
The preliminary results for the Oct. 2011 School Club Round-Up are in and the W9GRS crew at Glen Raymond School in Watseka managed to place in the top 3 for the 5th straight time. All the schools were completely blown out by KF5CRF who scored a whooping 140,000 pts with 625 qso's. Only college station W7ASU had more qso's or points. We took 3rd r i g h t b e h i n d p e r i e n n a l p o we r K4WBM. We did score a career high in Q's with 205 and was one of the tops in multipliers (we make our contacts count!). The February edition is 13th17th. We'll try to operate as much as possible, focusing on digital during the school day and SSB after school. A couple of the 8th grade boys have been talking about what it might take to reach the 100,000 point plateau. It might be an interesting week for us as I will actually be available to assist in operations as I have a student teacher and won't officially be teaching that week! I'm going to try to get the 40/80/160 up next week for working some of the closer stations. We were able to work the guys at HK0NA on 4 bands with students making 3 of the 4 contacts on SSB. It was a great experience as students learned the frustration of operators keying up, whistling, or transmitting on repeatedly on HK0's transmit frequency. It was summed up best by one of our 8th grade students, "If someone has a 1 x 2 call, shouldn't he know what it means by split? Heck, even I know that." Needless to say, DX code is something we value at the school station and listen before we transmit. We did manage the contacts and proudly responded with "59 at Glenn Raymond School, 73's!" We did it during the height of the pile-ups so we didn't get a chance to chat with WB9Z, though we know he was listening for us. Look for
http://dxarc.org/corporatec.htm Congratulations to the entire expedition crew for making nearly 200,000 contacts! And congratulations to all the KARS members who put HK0NA in their logs. When you send for your QSL, be sure to include a little extra to help offset expedition expenses.
WB9Z “ON THE ROAD AGAIN” Freshly returned from the extremely successful operation on Malpelo Island, Jerry WB9Z is already committed to operating from Swains Island in September 2012. Jerry will be joining 19 other highly experienced operators on the island near American Samoa in the far South Pacific. The team of operators includes Craig K9CT from Peoria and 18 other hams from America, Germany, Sweden and Italy. Using the call NH8S plans are to operate all modes and all bands 160-6. Logs will be available on line via satellite. Check out their web page: www.nh8s.org So how many DXCC entities has WB9Z operated from? It might be easier to list the ones he hasn’t operated from!
WHAT! NO HYPERTERMINAL! BY CLAY N9IO
If you recently upgraded to Windoze 7 (like you have a choice), you probably discovered that Microsoft didn’t include Hyperterminal. A free emulator from SourceForge Japan named TeraTerm is a fitting Hyperterm replacement for Win 7 users (Win 95 and up). You can find information more in next month’s newsletter—ed here: http://logmett.com/index.php?/ BOARD MEETING products/teraterm.html. [Source] TNC-X Smartdigi page h t t p : / / March board meeting will be at the Coyote
www.usmartdigi.com/
MARCH 2012
Guest Tom W9SRV presented a program on severe weather communications and how the NWS interfaces with amateur radio at the February KARS meeting
HAM DEMOGRAPHICS IN KANKAKEE COUNTY If you’ve ever wondered how many hams there are in Kankakee County and how they are distributed throughout the county, we did a little research and came up with the following: 60901 Kankakee 53 60913 Bonfield 5 60914 Bourbonnais 35 60915 Bradley 23 60935 Essex 1 60940 Grant Park 7 60950 Manteno 15 60954 Momence 12 60964 St. Anne 2 Total 153 Those are licenses issued by the FCC and that includes three club licenses. As a result, there are exactly 150 hams in Kankakee County as of about February 1st. That’s a lot of operators. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that KARS is an extremely active 87 year old club steeped in the finest traditions of amateur radio that also has a long history of promoting the latest technology.
NEW GUIDELINES FOR 60M
Thanks to the FCC Report and Order issued November 18, 2011, amateurs will enjoy a number of new privileges on the 60 meter band beginning March 5, including a boost in effective radiated power from 50 to 100 W, as well as the ability to use CW and certain digital modes. Check out the latest ARRL band plan for 60 Meters at: http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-publishesnew-guidelines-for-60-meters. Canyon 6 PM Eat, 7 PM meeting. All are welcome.
